


burn slow

by callunavulgari



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Someone Never Died, Fluff and Angst, Kissing in the Rain, M/M, Medic Lea, Mild Gore, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:04:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lea stared up at his friend, squinting through the cloud of blackened dust that the creature dissolved into, and thought helplessly, I should have died just now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burn slow

**Author's Note:**

> This started out forever ago, back when I was doing AU bingo in 2010, because the prompt 'someone never died' just shouted Axel at me. I started thinking about all the things that would have changed if Lea had never died, never even became a nobody, but mostly what effect that would have on Roxas. Because he wouldn't have lived that year with Axel teaching him how to really be someone, giving him the room that Roxas needed to become himself. If Axel hadn't been there, Roxas would have been in the hands of the rest of the Organization, the ones who treated him like shit in Days. He would be a completely different person, even his speech would be different. So I got about 200 words in and promptly forgot about it. 
> 
> Fast forward to present day, where I've just finished my Ladystuck Blind fic and am looking through my inbox on tumblr for something short to write, a prompt leftover or something. That's when I found starcrossed-sky's prompt for: 'What-if AU, KH, something about Axel/Lea and Saix/Isa maybe?' and instantly went back to sift through my unfinished fic to find that 200 words I'd started like three years ago. Almost 7k later and here we are, a strangely fluffy fic about the would be relationship between an all too human Lea and a weird robot-esque kid called Roxas. 
> 
> So enjoy, this may not have been the short and sweet fic I was looking to write in between big bangs, but it was fun all the same.
> 
> (There was totally supposed to a scene where Roxas gives Lea his chakrams, but if I'd written that the fic would be pushing 10k, so I sadly left it out.)

Lea doesn't know how he made it off world alive. Isa tells him that it's because they'd worked together, that Lea never would have made it out of the slums without Isa by his side—and honestly, he's probably right. Somewhere between the shadows coming to life and the screaming, Lea had found himself pinned to cool concrete, staring up at glittering yellow eyes, already flinching away from a blow that surely would have ended him—and just before he would have been little more than pulp on the street Isa had shown up, skewering the shadow neatly through the middle with the pointed end of the lance he'd picked up in the Shinra District. Lea stared up at his friend, squinting through the cloud of blackened dust that the creature dissolved into, and thought, _I should have died just now_.

Isa blinked down at him, blood trickling into his eyes from a nasty criss-crossing gash across the bridge of his nose, his expression just this side of feral and shouted, "What the hell are you doing, Lea? Get your ass up!"

It was that tone, that _panic_ in Isa's normally cool and collected voice that had Lea flinching all over again, scrambling to his feet more out of habit than conscious thought. Isa growled and launched himself at another shadow—snapping out a quick "Find a weapon, idiot"  before disappearing into the chaos.

Lea remembers the way his town had looked, the world crumbling around him, a dark bruise marring Radiant Garden's usually pristine sky. The way his neighbors had screamed—how the girl with dark hair who used to volunteer at the orphanage had fought, fierce and determined until one of the flying shadow's had finally ripped her throat out. He remembers how between the sounds of carnage and the screaming he'd heard whispers of heartless and Xehanort in hushed whispers and choked last breaths.

He watched until another of the creatures noticed him, and then he was scrambling to get away—crawling on his hands and knees to pluck a well-worn sword from the crushed and bloodied hand of an elderly man whose slate grey hair was plastered to what remained of his skull. Swords had never been his forte, ever since he'd dropped one on his foot when he was nine and never quite forgotten the feeling of steel between the bones, but somehow he doubts his frisbees are gonna do much against these creatures.

Seven creatures met their end at the touch of that sword, and he'd been aiming for an eighth when Isa reappeared from the crowd, face just as bloody, his eyes wide and panicked. A sour feeling had begun to grow in Lea's stomach even as Isa had reached one sweaty, dirty hand over and clenched Lea's in his own. They were running before Isa could even gasp out "Lea, Lea, the ships are leaving. They're leaving us. We can't stay here, Lea, we'll die."

They almost hadn't made it, too busy tripping over half destroyed houses and dismembered corpses, but they skidded up just as the last ship's ramp was going up, a dark haired teenager wielding a gunblade with one hand and clutching a terrified, bloody toddler with the other. He'd been scowling at the shadows, the child pressed tight to his chest, too terrified to even cry when he caught sight of them—just that one look, at their joined hands and the blood stained weapons, and he’d gestured them towards the ramp.

It had taken all three of them to get the doors shut against the clambering darkness trying to slither inside, and even then, a couple had made it through—ones that Isa had hacked into with a half mad light in his eyes.

But they'd gotten it shut, the ship rumbling to life beneath them. The scratching, tearing sounds outside were loud and grating, the claws against hard gummi like nails on a chalkboard. For a moment Lea was terrified that they could get inside—but the ship had shuddered, their stomachs dropping out from under them when it had lifted off the ground and eventually, the ripping and tearing of the hull slowly stopped.

There was a window nearby, and together, they'd watched their world drown in darkness.

All the while, Lea had clutched his chest, listened to his frantically pounding heart and thought _something's wrong_. Judging by the look on Isa's face, the pale hand prodding his own neck for his pulse, he wasn't the only one with that thought.

.  
  
The wrongness of his own heartbeat never really abated. Some nights he would wake to the sound of his own blood running through his veins and panic, because it didn’t make sense. It shouldn’t be like this, the thumping of his own heart in his chest as alien as the world that they manage to take refuge in.  
  
Lea isn’t entirely sure if Traverse Town is an actual world, the way that Radiant Garden was. There are no oceans an hour outside of the town like there was on his home planet—no talk and trade from other cities. It was like a hunk of space rock, assembled from bits and pieces of the refugees who’d migrated there—stained glass and bell towers that reminded him of the ancient churches miles south of the Crystal Fissure, ramshackle little shops that lost souls ran, hoping to aid other travelers. It was strange, and there was hardly enough space for the travelers already there much less including them.  
  
At first, they sleep in their ship and alleyways, taking turns sleeping with Yuffie cradled in their laps. They don’t have blankets—hell, they barely have food, their stomachs aching with hunger.  
  
Cid finds work three weeks into their stay, a brick building in the First District that’s falling apart, but stable enough. He sells odds and commodities in exchange for money or food and they sleep in the loft area for a very long time, piled together in the corner; violations of personal space a concept that they don’t have the time or the inclination to balk at.  
  
Lea tries to do his part—he takes his shifts at the shop and volunteers at the shelter off the side of one of the many alleys. It’s small and rundown as everything else, but there’s thin gruel there that they let him bring home to Yuffie and sick people in need of help. He’d never been trained to be a nurse—never before had he had to deal with broken bones and lacerations gone septic; the extent of his knowledge was occasionally patching the other kids up back at the orphanage with the aid of creams and bandages he’d stolen from the director’s office.  
  
It wasn’t ideal, but he’d always been a fast learner. Spooning gruel into the mouths of suffering people wasn’t very hard, nor was helping Aerith set the bones and moving the corpses.  
  
He’d come home smelling of sickness and death, blank-eyed and silent until Isa helped hose the smell off of him before Yuffie could catch a whiff. Then he would sleep, Isa tucked up against his back and little girl warmth tucked safely against his chest.  
  
The next day, he would do it all over again.  
  
.  
  
The first five years pass that way; the five of them doing odd jobs while Yuffie grows from spindly four year old to an enthusiastic nine. They teach her self defense when they have time, and before long, she’s training with all of them when she can.  
  
Then the day comes that Aerith lets them know about a new job—one that the shelter has been debating over for a period of time, but lacking the people to do it.  
  
Cid doesn’t entrust them with his ship easily and makes Lea and Isa take Squall along with them for the first few runs. They become glorified ambulances, chartering refugees and supplies between worlds—evacuating the people they can from worlds already overrun.  
  
Traverse Town was never lacking in heartless—they prowled the darkened streets, searching for a wayward soul’s heart to steal. But it wasn’t the way it had been in Radiant Garden—it wasn’t overrun, not the way that the worlds they travel to are.  
  
The first time he sees a world drowning in darkness again, he freezes up on the ramp to the ship, sword in hand, unable to make himself take that last step onto foreign soil.  
  
Isa has already rushed past him, dashing into the fray with his lance—and it isn’t until a child screams that Lea is able to will himself to move.  
  
It’s worse than the shelter, sifting through corpses in a desperate bid to find someone living—someone that he can help. Often, when he does find someone, they’re too damaged for him to help. Some beg him for death, bones crushed or chests torn open. Sometimes he’ll deign to oblige them, running them through to give them a swift death rather than letting the heartless come back to feast. Other times, he’ll be forced to leave them be, to rot to death in the heat or be eaten alive, and they’re curses will follow him into his dreams.  
  
He isn’t good at it, not at first. He trains and he fights and he learns to stitch a suture as quickly as possible, but he isn’t like Isa, who hacks his way into the ranks of shadows and nearly always returns with a survivor or two.  
  
But it’s their job—it’s what they’re meant to do; their home is the wide openness of space, just the two of them and Cid’s ship humming around them. They start to see Yuffie less and less, her gaptoothed grin turning into a mischievous smile while they aren’t watching.  
  
Nowadays, Isa is quiet. He’d always been the quiet sort of course, choosing to remain in the background while Lea does the talking, but now... Well, now Lea hardly ever hears his voice, despite the amount of time they spend together. They don’t talk, traveling the worlds in a silence so absolute that all he can hear is just the alien beat of his heart.  
  
.  
  
When Sora arrives in Traverse Town, they’re off world. All the same, they hear of him when they return—Yuffie excitedly regaling them with tales of how the kid had beaten Squall, how he’d destroyed the large heartless plaguing the Third District, how he had a key—and if the King’s men were to be believed, this keyblade the boy possessed was their saving grace.  
  
Lea doesn’t even meet him until they have their home world back, the kid smiling and laughing with the others in a way that makes him think of a small blond he’d met, once upon a time.  
  
The kid is gone again before he can say hello, and after that, it doesn’t matter, because they all forget him.  
  
.  
  
He rarely stays in Radiant Garden—Hollow Bastion—despite it being brought back, choosing instead to buy his own ship and continue the work that he’s been doing for the last nine years—saving people, hunting heartless.  
  
This time, Isa doesn’t come with him, choosing instead to stay within the labs at home—tinkering with god knows what.  
  
Lea is twenty-two years old, nine years past his expiration date, and the only home he’s ever known is the emptiness of space.  
  
.  
  
He’s on a world that seems to be mostly jungle the first time he sees the kid. He feels like shit, hot and sweaty enough that the simple t-shirt he’s wearing sticks to his skin, and the local insect population has decided that he’s a particularly smelly feast. The world itself is mostly overgrown greenery and the occasionally skittish animal, so he’s contemplating just leaving all together when he sees a flash of yellow and black among all the green.  
  
The kid is short, young probably, and somehow not sweating to death in the _full length black trenchcoat he’s sporting_.  
  
Lea’s about to shout out to him when the kid turns, and he gets his first glimpse of the kid’s face.  
  
“Ven?” he shouts, gaping as the kid startles and goes for—  
  
A keyblade.  
  
Ten years ago, Ven had a wooden sword shaped like a key. At the time, Lea had thought it was weird as hell, but hey, not everyone could fight with frisbees.  
  
“Ven, is that you?” he asks, wading closer through the waist high plant life.  
  
After that initial flinch, the kid’s face had gone blank—eyes cold and blue like two chips of ice and that... that wasn’t right at all. “Seriously, kid, say something.”  
  
“That isn’t my name,” the kid says, his grip tightening on the weapon at his side.  
  
Lea lets out a disbelieving little laugh, not even five feet from the kid. “Well, you sure look like him, all I’m saying.” After a moment of silence, he tries, “What is your name then?”  
  
Blondie hesitates, his grip finally seeming to relax a little bit. More silence, and then— “My name’s Roxas.”  
  
“Roxas,” Lea says, trying the name on his tongue. It feels different, the sharpness of the sound at odds with such a soft looking kid. “Well, Roxas, my name’s Lea and I’m not gonna hurt you, okay?”  
  
He doesn’t have to crouch down to talk to the kid on his level the way he used to with Yuffie, but the kid’s still short, hardly coming up to his chest. He lifts his hands up, palms forward—universal symbol for peace and being careful around possibly feral survivors. “I’ve got a ship,” he says, chancing another step forward. The kid doesn’t flinch back or anything, so he thinks of it as a success. “I’m on a supply run, came here to see if any folks needed refuge from the heartless.”  
  
“This world is dead already,” the kid says, cocking his head. “It perished long before the heartless came. It’s only occupants are plants and animals, so there’s nothing for you here.”  
  
Well, that was weird. “There’s you, isn’t there?” Lea tries. “That’s someone.”  
  
The kid—Roxas—shakes his head, backing away a step. “I’m a nobody,” he corrects, and seriously, what? “My mission was to dispatch as many of the shadows as I could so that their stolen hearts can find refuge in Kingdom Hearts. I was here to observe, but there is nothing to do so. Thus, my mission is concluded.”  
  
He talks like a robot, eyes still weirdly blank. It’s making something inside of Lea twist unpleasantly. “So, you’ve got a ride picking you up?” he asks, trying not to think about who would send a kid that looks no older than fourteen out by himself. Even him and Isa were older, and they at least had each other.  
  
The kid cocks his head again, the movement almost mechanical, stilted. “I have my own means of transportation,” he says, and that, apparently, is that because he marches off into the trees, no goodbye or anything.  
  
Warily, Lea follows.  
  
“Aren’t you a bit too young to be piloting a ship?” he asks.  
  
The kid looks back over his shoulder and frowns when he sees that he’s being followed. “I have no need of any ship,” he says.  
  
“Then what—” he starts, cutting himself off when the kid stops in front of what looks like a giant gaping hole in reality. He thinks of all the worlds by now that he’s seen drowning in darkness, all of them with giant sparking dark holes bruising the sky, sucking everything into it. Those bruises look like this one, though this seems to be stable.  
  
“I am supposed to avoid detection at all costs,” the kid says, like he’s reciting something. “Should that prove impossible, I should avoid communication. I have failed on both accounts, but I find that you feel... familiar. I will now take my leave so that I may recieve my punishment.”  
  
Lea’s eyes widen as the kid makes a move to step into the portal, lunging forward to take hold of his elbow. “Woah, woah! Punishment? Hey, stop, are you in some kind of trouble?”  
  
Roxas looks at him with an expression that’s almost confusion, like he’s mimicking an expression he’s seen on others. “The others will not be happy, but I would not say I am in trouble, no.”  
  
He makes another move towards the portal, but Lea holds on tight. “Look, if you... if you need me to take you somewhere, I can do that. I mean, it’s kind of my job, taking people where they need to go. Maybe you’ve got family somewhere?” In a smaller voice, he whispers, “You don’t have to go back to them if they hurt you.”  
  
The kid stares at him for a long minute, so long that it’s starting to feel a little awkward, just standing there with his hand on a strangers arm. And then, then, the kid does his damn best to break Lea’s heart.  
  
He tries to smile. It’s strained and crooked, like his mouth doesn’t know what shape it’s supposed to be making, and it doesn’t reach those blank eyes, but it’s... definitely trying to be a smile.  
  
“Thank you, but I have no family. I will rejoin my fellows, but I do... appreciate the offer.”  
  
With that, he gently removes Lea’s hand from his, and steps into the portal, leaving Lea feeling strangely bereft.  
  
.  
  
He keeps seeing him after that—glimpses of blond hair and black coats on the worlds he visits. Most of the time they’re just flashes, there and gone before Lea has the chance to call out to him. But sometimes, rarely, they’re occupying the same space at the same time, and manage to have a brief, nearly one-sided conversation before Roxas disappears again.  
  
It’s weird as all hell, because after that first conversation, the kid manages to clam up more than he did then, mostly silent save for one or two word responses as Lea chatters at him.  
  
They’re in Agrabah when the silence breaks.  
  
This time, it really is just a supply run. Agrabah’s been safe from the darkness for some time, so the shadows are rare and usually don’t survive more than a few minutes in the face of its citizens. It’s a fantastic place to go for bandages, clothing, and food when they’re running low, and Princess Jasmine has been very accommodating to him since their first heartless infestation.  
  
Lea doesn’t need much now that he doesn’t have an entire shelter to stock. He just needs medical supplies and food for himself and his passengers, and the occasional exotic snack for Yuffie, so it’s easy to get into the marketplace, buy his stuff and get out.  
  
Princess Jasmine sometimes even invites him for tea and snacks with her, her fiance, and her father, though it’s rare that he takes her up on the offer. It’s not that he’s busy, necessarily, but after years in space, being on the ground makes him feel uneasy.  
  
He hasn’t even finished his shopping when he sees Roxas out of the corner of his eye, standing in the shadows of an alleyway, just out of reach of the sweltering heat of the desert sun.  
  
He doesn’t even move when Lea sees him, just stands there quietly, holding his gaze.  
  
Lea politely thanks the street vendor before crossing the busy market to where Roxas is standing.  
  
“How’s it hangin’, kid?” he laughs, ruffling his sweat damp hair. It’s just this side of too long like this, sticking to his shoulders and the back of his neck in long wet tendrils. For once, he longs for the time that he’d slicked his hair with so much product that it didn’t touch his skin at all. Immediately, he grimaces at the thought. He’d looked like such a little douche.  
  
“Are you following me?” the kid demands. His hands aren’t on his hips and his eyes are about as blank as always, but there’s a spark of annoyance there, real honest to god emotion that has Lea gawking like an idiot.  
  
“No?”  
  
The kid harrumphs, like he’s twelve and stomping his feet. “I don’t understand how you manage to be occupying the same planet that my missions take place on over 80% of the time. The last nine missions I have been on, you have been there. It is very vexing.”  
  
Lea blinks. “Um.”  
  
“Furthermore, each time you endeavor to draw me into conversation, regardless of the fact that I’ve informed you that association with the locals is a punishable offense.”  
  
God, this kid talks like a seventy year old history professor. “I... didn’t know that it was forbidden for all of your missions? I mean, you’re in the middle of a market. You tryin’ to tell me that you don’t talk to anyone?”  
  
The kid looks away from you, drumming his fingers against his clothed forearm. More emotion, awesome. “I utilize the shadows during my missions so that most of the planet’s occupants do not see me. You, however, are an anomaly. No matter how thick the shadows around me, you never fail to see me.”  
  
Lea gawks at him, looking him up and down for a moment. Yeah, nope, not invisible. But more than that, what the hell is he talking about? Utilizing the shadows sounds like heartless shit, and you’re damn sure the kid doesn’t look like one.  
  
He tries to laugh it off, ruffling his hair again nervously. “Maybe it’s just destiny,” he chuckles.  
  
The kid doesn’t laugh at the joke, if anything, he gets a steely look in his eye, like your quip made some kind of sense. “Destiny,” he repeats, tongue wrapping around the word like it’s a piece of melting chocolate.  
  
He fixes Lea with an unnerving look and leans into his space, so close that he could count the kid’s eyelashes if he wanted to. Then, the kid just reaches out and... tucks the hair behind Lea’s ear, knuckles grazing the sunburnt skin of his cheek.  
  
“Perhaps,” he whispers, and steps back into shadow.  
  
.  
  
The next time Lea sees him, he’s back home, dumping trinkets into Yuffie’s lap and smiling at the shrill noises of excitement she keeps making when he catches sight of him just outside the window; he’s leaning back against the brick of the house across from theirs and staring at Lea. It’s not a normal look—intense enough that if it wasn’t for the usual coat, Lea wouldn’t even believe it was him.  
  
“Can you gimme a sec, Yuffie?” he whispers, distracted and hardly waiting for her response before he’s letting himself out the door.  
  
It’s raining outside, coming down hard enough that there are already puddles forming on the ground. He’s soaked by the time he crosses to where Roxas is standing and he curses and shakes himself when he reaches the overhang.  
  
“So, who was talking about following who again?” he asks, grinning blindly in Roxas’ direction as he wipes the water from his eyes.  
  
“I was,” the kid responds, and then— “That is your family.”  
  
Lea looks back at the window; inside, Yuffie is bouncing around Squall in happy circles as Isa and Aerith converse quietly in the corner. Briefly, Lea feels a pang at the thought of Isa, and wonders just when they stopped being friends.  
  
“I— well, yeah, I guess. They’re as good as.” When Roxas looks at him with something akin to confusion, he elaborates. “They’re my friends. I don’t have a family. I was orphaned long before the heartless came along.”  
  
“And you are bitter about this,” Roxas surmises, nodding.  
  
Lea looks at him in surprise. “I wouldn’t say I’m bitter anymore. Lots of people don’t want their kids, and I got over it a long time ago. These guys are the closest I’m gonna get in this lifetime, I think, and I don’t mind that one bit.” He nervously chances a glance back at the house, but no one is paying him or the kid any attention. “Yuffie’s a great kid, best little sister a guy could ask for. And Isa and the rest of ‘em...” he trails off, unsure of the words he’s looking for. “Well, they’re pretty great too.”  
  
They’re silent for a moment, just watching the rain fall against the cobblestone streets. “I wanted to clarify,” Roxas says suddenly. “What you said before about destiny—”  
  
“I was joking aroun—” he starts, but Roxas cuts him off with a wave of a hand.  
  
“You may have been jesting, but the more I examine the evidence the more I am forced to acknowledge that you were correct. The likelihood of such ‘coincidences’ occurring with such frequency is nigh impossible. Furthermore, I have seen you on every planet that I have visited in the last hundred and seventeen days. What other explanation is there but destiny?”  
  
Lea stares at him, taken aback. “Well, yeah, I guess that’s a lot, but I mean, there are definitely other explanations—”  
  
Roxas gives him a flat look, his bangs dripping into his eyes. “My organization calls me the Key of Destiny. If you were going to say that you do not believe in destiny or fate, I assure you, it exists.”  
  
He has no idea what to say to that, so instead, he blurts out, “Who even taught you to talk, kid? You speak like someone three times your age.”  
  
“My superiors Number 4 and Number 6 instructed me in how to converse as I did not recall the memories of my somebody.”  
  
Lea blinks at him. “Your what now?”  
  
Roxas slants him an annoyed look. “I must take my leave now, Lea. If I am gone too long, my absence may be noticed.”  
  
“Wait, what.”  
  
Roxas gives him a solemn nod and without another word, melts back into the wall.  
  
.  
  
He’s bandaging the leg of a delirious old man when a shadow falls across him.  
  
“You should really stop vanishing on me, it’s kind of rude,” he says without looking away from the guys leg. He feels Roxas crouch down next to him, his coat brushing against Lea’s leg.  
  
“I apologize.”  
  
A moment passes, broken only by the crazed mumbling of the injured old man. Lea secures the bandage, then turns to rummage in the pack for some pain killers. “I was not aware that you were a healer,” Roxas says as Lea tips the pills into the mans mouth.  
  
Wiping his bloody hands on his trousers, Lea says, “I’m not. I know how to make the pain stop and how to set a broken bone, stitch up a wound, do a blood transfusion... y’know, basic medic stuff. Magic’s never really been my forte.”  
  
He can feel Roxas’ eyes on him. “Fire,” Roxas says after a moment, and the word is so out of place that Lea looks up at him.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Fire,” Roxas says again. “It is my belief that you would work well with fire magic—it is chaotic and unpredictable, but it is also the most loyal of the elements. Air, water, and earth are fickle, but fire will come to all who call.”  
  
Lea stares at him, aghast. “Did you just call me a whore?”  
  
Roxas _blushes_ , holy crap. “It was not my intention to do so. I merely wished to point out that you come to assist all those who need you, regardless of whether they can repay your kindness or not.”  
  
“Huh, okay then,” Lea says, beginning to pack up his kit. The planet isn’t in danger any more and this shelter is far outside of the danger zone. A nurse bustles over to him, thanking him profusely and thrusting a basket full of food in his hands—apples, cheese, bread, even a few eggs near the bottom. The whole time that she talks, not once does she look at the boy standing at Lea’s side.  
  
Once she’s left, Lea turns to look at Roxas, curious. “They really can’t see you, can they?”  
  
“They cannot,” Roxas confirms. “Which further proves that you and I are tied together in some manner of speaking.”  
  
Lea tries not to leer. He really does. He’s not a creeper.  
  
“Weird,” he says, shaking his head as Roxas follows him out of the tent. Only when they reach his ship does Lea turn to him again. “So,” he starts. “Wanna take a ride with me?”  
  
God, that sounds like a cheesy pick-up line. “I mean,” he amends. “You’ve got your shadow things, so it’s not like you can’t just jump ship when you get bored.”  
  
Roxas seems to consider this for a moment, before shaking his head. He almost looks disappointed. “I am sorry to say that much of my mission here is as yet still unfinished. There is a large heartless outside of town that must be dispatched with due haste. It was only... my desire to see you that lead me astray.”  
  
“Wow, dude. Way to make me feel guilty, man.”  
  
Roxas blinks at him. “That was not my intention. I allowed myself to get distracted because I wished to see you. The monster will still be there, I’m sure.”  
  
Finally the rest of Roxas’ statement catches up with him. “Wait, you’re telling me that you’re about to go kill a huge heartless by yourself? You don’t need any help with that?”  
  
He gives Lea’s sword a scornful look. “I am quite skilled at dispatching them, you have no need to worry. And at any rate, your weapons would not be suitable for releasing the hearts locked inside.”  
  
“Um, okay,” Lea says, giving his sword a confused look. It’s done him well in the past, after all.  
  
Roxas shakes his head. “You misunderstand me. No weapon other than the keyblade can release the hearts—while I am sure your weapon is suitable enough to destroy them, they are not the keyblade.”  
  
Lea laughs. “Suitable, sure, I guess. My swords suck. I was never meant to be swordkind though, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.”  
  
“What did you use before?” he asks, sounding curious.  
  
Lea laughs again. “Frisbees.”  
  
Roxas’ nose crinkles up when he frowns like that, stupidly adorable. “I am not familiar with a frisbee,” he says gravely.  
  
“It’s like... a hard plastic circle. You fling it and it hits the target.”  
  
“That does not sound conducive to slaughtering monsters.”  
  
Lea grins. “It really isn’t, but back then, the most I got into was sparring fights with Isa and one time, this kid named Ven.”  
  
Roxas’ eyes brighten with recognition. “That is the person that you mistook me for,” he says.  
  
He shrugs. “You look like him. Anyway, go kill your monster— unless, are you sure you don’t need any help? I could just keep an eye on you, make sure it doesn’t run you through or something.”  
  
Roxas shakes his head again, looking out towards the treeline. “That won’t be necessary,” he says. “I have done this many times before, frequently on my own. Your concern is appreciated, but unneeded.”  
  
Lea shrugs again, already backing up the ramp, his pack slung over his shoulder. He grins and waves. “All right, then. Guess I’ll see you next time then. You be careful, understand?”  
  
The last thing that Lea sees as the ramp is closing is Roxas nodding gravely, like he’s been tasked with something incredibly important. So freaking weird, but he can’t say that he doesn’t like the kid.  
  
.  
  
Roxas materializes in the passenger seat right as Lea’s gunning down a few stray heartless ships, nearly giving him a heart attack.  
  
“You almost gave me a heart attack!” he cries as he takes down the remaining few. Once they’re little more than space junk, he takes a deep breath and turns—  
  
The breath catches in his throat.  
  
“Holy fucking _shit_ ,” he hisses, kicking the ship into automatic and lunging for his kit.  
  
Roxas is dripping all over his floor, his coat absolutely shredded—there are clawmarks raking up and down his ribs, arms, even his face. There’s a nasty set of them low on his ribs where Lea’s pretty sure he can see bone.  
  
He slides onto the floor in front of Roxas, an injection already in hand. It isn’t the good stuff, but it’s a damn sight better than a couple of pills for the pain. Carefully, he slides his fingers underneath Roxas’ chin, fighting down nausea when the kid’s head lulls listlessly to the side. If the kid wasn’t blinking slowly at him, he’d think him dead already.  
  
He clasps Roxas’ chin with one hand, leaning forward to briefly press their foreheads together. He can feel the hitch in Roxas’ breathing, how unsteady the puffs of air are against his face. “You’re gonna be okay, you hear me?”  
  
Roxas just nods, his eyes fluttering closed as the syringe slides home.  
  
“Fuck,” Lea mutters. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, where’s a potion when you need one.”  
  
He works quietly, biting down on his lip when he gets to a particularly bad area—but it isn’t until he gets Roxas’ coat the rest of the way off that he sees the worst of the damage. He lets out a choked little helpless noise, terrified that he’s going to be sick.  
  
His chest has been clawed open, like something rooted around inside of him before giving up on whatever it was after. There are ribs exposed, a couple broken like—  
  
Like something was trying to get to Roxas’ heart.  
  
He whimpers, hands hovering just over his chest, unsure. “No, no, no, c’mon man, please,” he whispers before dragging a flap of skin back over the exposed ribs and laying his hand over where the heart should be.  
  
There’s no beat.  
  
 _There’s no beat_.  
  
Roxas stirs against him. “What are you doing?” he slurs out, confused.  
  
“I—you don’t have a—”  
  
“I told you,” Roxas mutters. “I’m a nobody. You won’t be able to find it because it isn’t there.”  
  
Lea stares at him, hands slick with blood—no, wait. The substance that Roxas is bleeding isn’t red—it’s black, dark as a shadow. He gags, slapping his wrist over his mouth and smearing some of the substance over his lip in the process.  
  
“You’re a heartless,” he whispers. Roxas glares at him, irritated.  
  
“I’m a nobody,” he corrects. “We are what is left when a heartless consumes someone, the mind left to wander, the body left to rot, like a puppet with its strings cut. We are all that remains, when the heart takes its leave” he explains, fingers clenching and unclenching in the fabric pooling in his lap.  
  
Lea drags in a ragged breath, running a hand through his hair—uncaring that half of it gets slicked back with Roxas’ weird not-blood. “I’ve seen the aftermath of heartless, Roxas, and you are not a corpse.”  
  
Roxas grits his teeth. “But I _am_ , Lea. Don’t you understand? I am a walking, breathing corpse.”  
  
All at once, he sighs, like the anger and irritation has just drained out of him. “Just, stitch me up,” he whispers. “A potion would be more suitable, but closing my wounds will suffice.”  
  
His voice seems a bit dreamy at the end, the drugs at long last entering his body to do their job.  
  
Once he is fully knocked out, Lea stares at him for a moment longer—two, before rushing to do as the kid had advised.  
  
If he has to stop every once and a while to vomit into a wastechute, well, he’s the only one awake to see him do it.  
  
.  
  
“Rise and shine,” he mutters when Roxas finally stirs, six hours later. He’s groggy waking up, looking down at the little cot at the back of Lea’s ship like he doesn’t know how he got there. He blinks three times in quick succession and then looks at Lea, adorably confused.  
  
“Yeah,” Lea says. “You forget that you warped onto my ship while you were bleeding out? ‘Cause I didn’t.”  
  
Roxas looks at him, eyes slowly widening as he feels down his bare chest—the sutures standing out like little barbed wire smiles all over his body.  
  
Predictably, Roxas immediately dissolves into shadow.  
  
“Make sure you don’t tear your sutures or I’ll make sure you stay dead!” Lea shouts at the empty ship.  
  
He sighs. Six hours outside of Radiant Garden, just him, space, and a metric fuckton of bloodstains.  
  
“Shit.”  
  
.  
  
He doesn’t see Roxas for weeks after that. He messes around with Yuffie in Radiant Garden, helps Squall and Isa set up the prototype of the security network, travels to about a dozen decaying worlds and barely brings back that many survivors. It’s a shitty couple of weeks, made worse by the fact that he can’t stop thinking about the lack of heartbeat under Roxas’ ribs. It isn’t the same, he tells himself. It isn’t connected to Lea’s panic over his own heart, how every day that’s passed by comes with a sense of inate wrongness.  
  
When he finally does see Roxas, it’s raining again, and Roxas is standing in the exact spot he had before, when he’d looked in on them through the window.  
  
“What are you doing here?” he asks, joining Roxas against the wall and folding his arms over his chest.  
  
Roxas fidgets, rain dripping into his eyes. The lashes are wet, Lea notes.  
  
“I came to apologize,” he says stiffly. “You did me a kindness and I repaid you with rudeness. It was wrong of me.”  
  
Lea shrugs. “I did have a couple questions you conveniently weaseled your way out of.”  
  
Roxas eyes him warily, his eyes—weirdly, not completely emotionless. They’re actually oddly animated, for someone who apparently doesn’t have a heart. He’ll start with that. “You said you don’t have a heart, so how do you feel?”  
  
Roxas blinks at him, wet lashes dragging against his cheeks. It’s more distracting than usual. “We don’t,” he says.  
  
“Bullshit,” he spits immediately. “You do feel. You feel confusion and anger, and I’ve had proof, understand? Those shiny blue windows of yours don’t lie worth a damn, Roxas, I’ll tell you that much. You’ve even said that you felt a ‘desire to see me,’ before. That compulsion—that want—that’s an emotion.”  
  
Roxas opens his mouth, but Lea cuts him off with a wave of his hand. “No! You don’t get to say that—your heart might not be in your chest, but it’s out there somewhere, and it’s beating for y—”  
  
He’s being kissed.  
  
Roxas’ hand is gentle, cradling the back of his skull as he goes up on tiptoes to draw their lips clumsily together. His fingers slide into the hair at the nape of his neck, making a quiet noise into Lea’s mouth that’s half whimper, half sigh.  
  
And Lea—Lea kisses back, taking a handful of black trenchcoat and shoving Roxas backwards into the wall, viscerally pleased with how Roxas makes another sound under his breath and wraps both arms around his neck.  
  
It’s a wet kiss, their faces slick with rain water, and clumsier than most, but it certainly isn’t lacking in passion.  
  
It’s actually... probably the nicest kiss he’s ever had, every place that their body touches singing with electricity. He doesn’t bother holding back the moan that escapes him when Roxas licks up against his teeth, just deepens the kiss until he doesn’t know where he stops and Roxas starts.  
  
When he can finally bring himself to pull away, he opens his mouth against Roxas’ kiss-swollen lips and whispers, “See? Bullshit.”  
  
Roxas’ breath catches, the grip around Lea’s neck tightening marginally. “You were wrong,” Roxas whispers back, breath tickling Lea’s lips. “If I do have a heart out there, it isn’t beating for me. It’s beating for you.”  
  
For that, Lea kisses him again, chaste as he can make it. When he pulls away again, he says without any malice, “That is probably the most indecently gushy thing I have ever heard and I live with a teenage girl a couple months of the year.”  
  
Roxas flushes, pressing his face into Lea’s chest as if he’s embarrassed.  
  
God, he loves this kid.  
  
They’re quiet for a moment, arms around each other as the rain beats down around them. He isn’t stupid enough to think that things are going to go totally okay—he’s got whatever weird organization that Roxas is a part of to deal with and the heartless are still devouring the world’s but for now, he could care less.  
  
.  
  
“I don’t suppose you dropped those invisible shadows of yours at all, did you?” he asks a few moments later, catching a glance of a confused looking Yuffie watching him through the window.  
  
Roxas shakes his head against Lea’s chest, rubbing his wet hair into Lea’s t-shirt.  
  
He closes his eyes. “So, my family definitely thinks I just spent the last minute making out with the air. Thanks a lot.”  
  
Pft, destiny. Destiny didn’t bring him this kid, destiny’s crazy sister fate did.  
  
He’s never gonna live this down.


End file.
